CBSE tweaks its rules to make Sanskrit mandatory

Published on: Feb 7, 2017
Author:
Arpith Vijayan

According to some teachers, the Central Board of Secondary Education has altered rules to make Sanskrit, a compulsory language. In December 2016, CBSE had announced that it would reintroduce class 10 board exams from the academic session 2017-18. There are schools in Delhi NCR that specially feel that the 2 language plan is reasonably confining but schools also worry that the alternatives are not beneficial for growth as it might not prove to be constructive in terms of making education in schools feel more international. According to the rules fixed by the CBSE, 2 language papers are mandatory for Class 10 Boards, from the academic years 2017-18. The new rules also confine the second language paper to 22 recognized languages in India. The twist lies in the selection of second language among 22 other Indian languages. Foreign language subjects are considered as an optional paper and it can’t be used as an alternative in the mandatory second language paper.

Therefore, schools in the Hindi speaking regions of North India are now in a dilemma, especially for schools in Delhi, as it has students from all corners of the country. More importantly, there is less number of students who would feel comfortable in a regional language like Odia or Tamil. School Administration is also in some state of alarm as they need to have teachers allotted for different regional languages. Schools can’t be comfortable to hire one teacher for two or three students who want to select a second language that doesn’t have that much number of students and because of that students will only have the option of either choosing Hindi or Sanskrit.

There are students who had picked a foreign language instead of Hindi after class 8 and are currently studying in class 9. These students have no other alternative to go back to Hindi so they can possibly only choose a foreign language as an optional subject. Each and every school strives to offer an alternative language option for the students, in case they find a problem with Hindi. For students studying in Class 6, schools might have either given them the options to choose between German, French, Spanish, Sanskrit or Mandarin. Assuming the child picks French, parents might request the child to be taught an additional language which falls within the constitutional circle of a national language to offer the child an option in Class 10 Board exams. When it comes to Sanskrit being offered as an alternative, it would be comparatively much easier as the resources are readily available and because foreign languages are best left to be optional, schools would perhaps reconsider their offerings and would restrict the choices of a third language to Sanskrit. More importantly, parents find Hindi as a subject where students can’t score high marks. Hence, Sanskrit is considered being made into a mandatory subject.

One of the administrators in a well known school in Delhi said that it is only prudent to aid the students in learning languages but the fact of the matter is that the languages are just used as means to get good grades because the languages that are taught in CBSE schools are just restricted to the theoretical aspects. This is because the schools are not equipped to take the language coaching to professional levels. Under these circumstances, parents would be more concerned about providing alternatives to their children where they can score better grades. Therefore, Sanskrit is the only option. Moreover, it would be more logical to find a teacher for Sanskrit who can cater to thirty students in lieu of finding three teachers of several different regional languages, as stated by the source.

About Arpith Vijayan

A content writer by day and a reader by night, Arpith is a man who sleeps less preferring to utilize the extra time to keep himself updated, discovering new things & reading up on new stuff. He is a learner who loves to explore new territories and take up more challenging work.